On the Front Lines to Clean our Cities' Air

From our CEO, Eric Planey:

The #AirQualityIndex measures how unsafe the air is outside of any city in the U.S. It ranges from 0 to 500 (the worst). At one point yesterday #NewYorkCity hit 484 (!), and was the most polluted city in the world. While it is reported the horrible AQI solely due to the wildfire smoke blowing in from Canada, the truth is much worse. The cause is actually the cocktail of emissions from the city's daily operations intermixing with the wildfire smoke blowing in. There are many stories making the case that the wildfires themselves are due to climate change creating overly dry conditions in Canada right now, it is our fight to heal the planet that can make these urban pollution bombs from happening more frequently. And that is through decarbonizing our cities.

For a city like New York, it will happen from three major initiatives. The first is by planting more trees and detoxifying plants. NYC has planted over 1 million trees in the last 10 years, and plans to plant 1 million more by 2030. 22% of the city is covered by 'tree canopy', and that percentage is growing thankfully. This past January, Columbia University posted an article on how the wild greenery of NYC does a great job sucking carbon out of the air. More of this, please.

Secondly the city must decarbonize transportation. While we have been talking about EVs only within the last 5-7 years, the city's air quality from improving transportation emissions has been happening for decades. This biggest factor was the conversion of gasoline from leaded to unleaded, and better cleaning and more fuel efficient engines. Despite this, 42% of emissions within New York State come from transportation, and 11% of local fine particulate matter in New York City comes from vehicles. The city is working hard to create regs to sell cleaner fuels, assist in fleet conversions to #ElectricVehicles (#EV) and cleaner fuels and potentially going to congestion pricing in April 2024. So we are on the way.

But there is no denying it - #buildings are one of the city's greatest generators of #carbonemissions. Buildings account for over 40% of the world's building emissions (including from the output of making the #buildingmaterials and the operating of the building itself). Given high building density and relatively high public transportation usage, buildings in New York City account for 70% of the city's greenhouse gas emissions. Yowza. But New York is not sitting still here, either. In 2019 a new law enacted requires that most large buildings have to drop emissions by 40% by the end of this decade, and to achieve net zero by 2050. The New York Times reported that nearly 80% of such buildings should already meet the new regulations' initial requirements. Shops like Building Energy Exchange are active in supporting the city to green its building stock. Statewide, we are lucky that we will operating on the border of NY and Mass and thanks to Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and NYSERDA issuing RFPs for building projects to incorporate the best in green building technology. Both states are considered the best in the US for green building incentives.

While initiatives to decarbonize the city itself would not have prevented the wildfire smoke from enveloping the city's air, the impact would have certainly been less severe had we already achieved the 2030 and 2050 mandates for buildings. SolaBlock will be operational this year, and we will begin selling our Solar Masonry Units to buildings of all types soon. While our product uses a solar panel to turn passive walls into active green energy generators, we are as much a building material as anything. We look forward to our work with Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and their excellent Center for Architecture Science and Ecology , and are so happy that we have Candace Shermansong as our new #builtenvironment advisor to help us interface with the right players. We are so proud to be located in both Pittsfield Mass and Troy NY. The border between the two states is invisible in our opinion, and as we saw that border didn't prevent the smokey winds from Canada from afflicting the lungs of people from both states.

So as the dirty winds from the north subside, and New Yorkers can go back to enjoy concerts in Central Park, tennis in Astoria, picnics in Brooklyn, visiting the Bronx Zoo, and walking to get a slice in Staten Island, people should feel better knowing the fight to clean our air will yield better and better results.